Present Tense
by Demented Inu
Summary: Leaving the wizard world gave him some security, stability. Loneliness makes him forget about his former best friend and all that he left behind... until that friend returns to him. HarryRon.


I've been around Harry longer than anyone else.

I know all of his little quirks and guilty pleasures, and he knows mine

We share everything with one another, spill our dirty little secrets with each other, confide in the other to keep that secret safe.

After all these years of trying to tell myself I'm completely straight, straighter than a straight thing, I finally admitted to myself that I'm bent as a nine pound note.

I'm not stupid, I'm not a berk, I know that Harry's married and his better half doesn't give a rat's arse about me. I forget her name sometimes, and I hate her so much I think I wouldn't even hesitate to toss her off the nearest building.

What is her name?

Well, Harry just adores her to death, buys her expensive little gifts and tells her how much he loves her every fifteen minutes or so. She's only using him for fame; after all, she *is* married to the Chosen One or whatever the hell they're calling him now.

The Savior would fit, since the whole Voldemort thing is long over. There are still a few unemployed Death Eaters running about, but they're really quite harmless in the long run.

Can't they just get a day job?

Makes me laugh to imagine a Death Eater working at Burger King.

So, it's been five years since the defeat of Lord Moldy Shorts. Harry's married to what's-her-face, and she's using him for glory.

So, where do I stand?

Well, after the war, Hermione and I realized that we weren't soul mates, just mates, and she left our little fling to go be with Viktor Krum, believe it or not.

I got myself a flat and am living on my own, by myself, in the middle of Muggle London, with almost no wizarding contacts whatsoever.

It drives me crazy to not use magic around the house.

The kitchen's a mess, and the living room's bare. My bed is too springy, and the entire house just reeks of loneliness.

I don't really have any real-life friends, and I'm not sure if the guys down at the bar count as real friends. I'll play cards with them once in a while, but it's mostly just drinking away our sorrows.

All of my friends are screwed up.

It's hard to remember that I'm muggle now, or at least I have to act that way every time I get the urge to Levitate the oatmeal off the top shelf in the grocery store.

So, now I'm just a regular guy, unemployed and shopping at Wal-Mart like everyone else.

Almost no contact with the wizard world.

That's where Harry comes in.

***

I shouldn't be too surprised that after three years of separation from one another, he'd be worried about me.

He looks so out-of-place in my grotty little home with his fancy-schmancy robes and clean haircut. Of course, it still sticks up in the back, like it did when we were schoolmates, but that was to be expected.

He's so _clean_, and shaven and crisp-looking, and… wow.

I didn't know he could clean up so well.

He's still screaming at me, his voice deeper than I remember it being. He's basically the same otherwise, with that well-known lightning bolt scar on his forehead and the jet-black hair sticking out from his scalp.

Those hands and the way they move when he gets excited.

The way he shuffles his feet when he's nervous.

Those white, straight teeth showing brightly when he smiles.

That warm, friendly air about him.

It makes me want to cry, or scream, or cling to him like there's no tomorrow to see him again.

But I just keep sitting on my sofa, taking the screams and the emotional battery.

He calls me things, like "berk," "git", and "tramp". "Mate" is never said and there's no sign that he even noticed I was really gone, or that he missed me at all.

That's okay.

You get used to it after a while.

After about a half-hour, he calms down enough to ask, "Where's Hermione, anyway?"

Kind of funny that he assumes we'd be together still, even after that row we had in the middle of the common room before we quit Hogwarts. I can still remember the cruel words I said to her, the tears glistening in her eyes. It's a painful memory, but a memory all the same.

So I sigh and I tell him about how she ran off to Bulgaria and abandoned us.

"Isn't that what you did?" he says.

I say I didn't abandon anybody, nobody cared that I left.

And he goes into another fit about my mum and my brothers and Ginny and there's still no mention of himself.

Maybe there's really no emotion he can carry other than anger and curiosity.

I'm not sure if he's staying, or where he'll sleep if he does. I can't share a bed with him, certainly not after my realization and not after the screaming fit he'd just had in my living room.

It would be cruel and unusual punishment to have him crash on the couch or on the floor, as filthy as it is.

He asks me why I chose such a muggle lifestyle, and such a bad neighborhood. He's right about that. There's not a day that goes by when something isn't broken or stolen or someone isn't killed or commits suicide. Teenage suicide seems to be the hot new thing around here, because just yesterday my neighbor's kid shot himself.

And that's when I'm stumped.

Why, exactly, did I choose muggle life over magic? Why did I move into this terrible bloody neighborhood, with no friends and no job and hardly able to pay the rent?

So what do I tell him?

Nothing.

I stare at him with my mouth open like a dead fish, and he raises his eyebrows, still waiting for my reply.

"It's getting late," I say. I mentally slap myself. Why did I say that? How stupid can I be?

"I know," he says. And then, "I have nowhere to stay."

"Get a hotel room." Yeah, nice, Ron. Tell your best friend to get his own room, that's real polite.

Former best friend, anyway.

"I thought you wouldn't mind if I stayed with you for a bit."

"It's filthy."

""Sbetter than a kick in the teeth." He makes a show in setting down his suitcase, which I'm guessing is made of dragon hide, and I can't help but feel bad for the poor creature.

I shrug and check my non-existent watch. "D'you want to sleep on the sofa, or…?"

"I thought I'd just crash with you. No big deal."

I look up at him in disbelief. In my bed? He's going to sleep in my bed?

Shit.

***

After a few hours, he finally gets settled and we start a real conversation going.

"I guess you wouldn't go to the post office on a Thursday," he says. "That's when all the biddies go and collect their pension money, and the queues are terrible."

"I still can't get used to the idea of a post office," I comment. "I'm so used to owl post, it's so much easier."

"I guess." He rummages around in some of my drawers, but I refrain from saying anything. "Who's Chris Stevenson?"

"Hmm?" I peek over at him and realize he's looking at the sticky on my mirror. "Oh. He's some guy I owe some money to. He's sort of the big cheese around here, I suppose."

"Oh." A pause. "So, Hermione broke it off with you then?"

"She gave me the big E after the war," I reply. "It never would have worked out."

"That's too bad," he says sympathetically.

Wait a minute. Was that a hint of care I just heard?

"How're things with…?" Damn. Forgot her name again.

"Susan," he finishes. Right. Susan. "She's been moaning like billy-o all morning, wanting me to hang out the washing, clean the car, do the hoovering, mow the lawn. I've had enough."

"She's turned into a bimbo, then?" It gives me a shock of satisfaction just to say it. She's really pretty, or so Harry always used to say, but she's always been kind of stupid.

Harry never did have the best taste in women.

He sighs. "I suppose, as much as I hate to say it."

I frown slightly. I do feel sorry for him, as birdbrained as he can be. Honestly, what was he thinking marrying a bitch like her?

"I really missed you," he whispers, and I almost don't catch it, he's so quiet.

I look over at him, and his eyes are still so very green, and I almost want to run over and hug him.

"I missed you too."

***

Great. One in the morning.

He looks so peaceful. He doesn't seem to mind that I'm right here.

I want to touch him, just once, on the face… I've never touched his mouth before.

It doesn't feel too much different from my own, just smoother. That's what I get for licking my lips so bloody often.

I should go to sleep. I don't want to be a crabby bastard in the morning.

Well, I'm a crabby bastard anyway, aren't I?

***

The first thing I notice as the sun streams through the curtains and gets me in the eyes is that my feet are cold. I move them back under the blanket, rolling over into the warm spot on the other side.

Warm spot?

Oh, right. Harry's warm spot.

It's so warm, so comforting. I snuggle into it, pulling the blanket up to my chin. Even his warmth gets me hard, and I think I'll bang one out before going out to eat.

***

The second thing I notice this morning is how hungry I am. Seeing Harry again is exhausting, and I'm starving.

Toast. I look around, my eyes scanning the counter for a loaf of bread.

"I ate the last two." The voice makes me jump, and I look behind me to see an already showered Harry looking at me in amusement. "It was only heels anyway."

Great. No toast for me because this bloody idiot has eaten all my bread.

"I didn't think you'd mind," he says, as if in apology.

"No," I reply. "I don't mind."

The kitchen is colder and crisper than usual. I'm not used to the cool summers here, especially compared to the Burrow's sweltering heat.

I realize it's because the window's open, and I make a note to close it when Harry isn't looking.

Something smells good. I look over to the stove and see the pancakes and eggs in the midst of cooking.

I smile at him. "I didn't know you could cook."

He shrugs. "I've been boning up on my cooking skills since I married Susan."

Susan. There's that name again. I've learned to despise it.

It freaks me out how grown-up my best mate looks. His hair, his eyes, his clothes… I'm guessing that wizarding money didn't go to waste.

"You haven't become a boozer, have you?" he asks worriedly, admiring my not-so-secret stash of alcohol. I blush for the first time in years and slam the cupboard.

"What business is it of yours?" I demand, even though it's probably unnecessary to get so upset.

"I'm just worried about you, is all." He wanders back to the stove to tend to his breakfast. I sigh tiredly and run a hand through my hair.

"I'm sorry," I say. "That was inappropriate of me."

He nods. "I understand."

"No," I insist. "Really. I'm sorry."

He looks up at me for a second, then back down at his food.

"So, about Hermione… why didn't you break up with her first?"

I think about it for a second before coming up with an answer.

"I dunno… I guess I just loved the idea of Hermione, not actually her… I wanted to keep a hold on that idea. I was so lost back then." A pause. "Besides, you know how big of a slap I'd get if I just told her to quit blithering on, that she was boring me out of my skull?"

He laughs then, and I hear it for the first time since the end of the war. It's such a nice laugh, and he should smile more, too. He has the most wonderful smile.

I still have that photo of us in my room, our arms around each other, grinning like the fools we were. Hermione took it for us just before school ended in seventh year, the sun shining brightly and the storm clouds so far away…

Of course, now those clouds are over my head. I've done everything to keep them away.

With Harry here in my kitchen, cooking us breakfast and hearing him laugh again, I feel as light as a feather. He tends to have that effect on people, to make them happy even when it's the worst of the worst of times. He always has.

I just wish that he'd do it more for me, as shallow and selfish as that may sound.

"There was a time when we would have been happy together," I go on. "There was a time when I would have accepted her as a lover, when I would have loved her."

"It was the same with Ginny," he says to me. "I didn't know what to do."

I step forward just to be closer to him, closer to his warmth.

"But at one point, she was so depressed with me," I say, "that she boshed seven pills, a handful of mushrooms, and eight vodka and tonics in one hour. Not surprisingly, she blew chunks all over the carpet."

"That must have brassed you off quite a bit," he says then, with an amused air about him.

"A bit," I respond. The pan is making hissing noises as Harry flips over the pancake to reveal a brown side.

"Are you cold?" he asks me in concern, without looking up.

"Cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey," I say and he laughs, walking over to shut the window.

"You haven't really changed much since school," he observes. "You're still too tall, you're hair's still too red, you're still funny…"

I don't know what to say to him. "Thank you" doesn't seem to cut it.

"Oh," he exclaims as if remembering something. "Did you know that Seamus is a brown hatter?"

Well, this is news. "What?"

"Yeah, he finally gave up. He's with Dean now."

I feign a smile. At least someone got what they needed. "Good for him."

"He's also in the Auror department now. He's brown-nosing his boss for a promotion. Thought you'd want to know."

There was a time a few years back when Harry and I had planned to go to Auror school together. We'd have the same job, the same flat, because we were practically brothers then. We shared everything together.

Not anymore, I guess.

"Good luck with that," I say with a laugh. "He's not easy to brown-nose to. Have you seen him? He's built like a brick shithouse."

"That's what I said, but he doesn't listen to me. Oh, by the way, what time should I go? I'll give you a buzz when I get home."

It's kind of odd how that falls through me like a stone into the pond. I don't quite know what to tell him… I hate to see him walk away from me, out of my life.

So instead I just stand there, my mouth open like a drowning fish.

He looks at me with raise eyebrows. "Whatever," he says nonchalantly. "I guess I'll just leave when the timing's right."

"Right," I say. I keep looking at him, though, the way his face has changed over the years I haven't seen him. How it's so different looking at him without the dirt on his face from playing Quidditch or without that haunted look in his eyes.

He looks different now. Older.

The arch of his brow is different, the shade of his eyes, the line of his jaw… all so vividly male, so obviously adult.

Yet he still hasn't gotten rid of those wretched glasses. He still hasn't thrown out that too-thin look. He still has that scar.

It amazes me still how he doesn't know. He doesn't know that I'm in love with him, doesn't know what I've gone through, doesn't know that I'm so very alone in this world. Doesn't know that I have scars, too.

I just have the ones you don't see.

And it's strange that he hasn't seen past my cover-up. That he hasn't figured out that the me he knows isn't me. That I lied to him… about everything.

It's almost painful.

I want to tell him everything about me. I want him to know that I love him, I want him to see through me, I want to pin him to the floor and shower him in kisses and tell him just how much I've missed him.

But I can't, and I don't. I just stand there.

And trace my scars…

***

"Why didn't it follow through?"

Harry looks up from his breakfast plate at me. I don't know why that question fell from my lips the way it did, completely on impulse. I can feel my neck and my ears warming up with embarrassment.

"Why didn't what follow through?" he asks me innocently. As if he doesn't know what I'm talking about.

"The plan." At his confused expression, I frown. "The plan with Ginny."

He shrugs and stares down at his eggs. "I don't know," he says absently. "I guess I just… I didn't really… "

Love her. The words weren't spoken but they hung in the air as if on a string.

Harry glances down at the wedding band wrapped around his finger. It looks good on him, looks expensive. That look comes back to him, that sad and slightly vacant expression that I know so well.

"Where did you meet her?" I ask softly.

"You know the answer to that one already."

"No," I say. "Not Ginny. Susan."

He sighs. "Oh." There's a pause and I can see him struggling to remember, although he doesn't want to show it. "Quidditch game. I think."

"You play for England, I presume?" It would only be logical to play for your own country.

But he just smiles and says, "No." He gets up, taking his plate and my own, even though I'm not finished eating yet. "The Cannons."

And he walks away to put the dirty dishes in the sink, letting the terrible feeling of familiarity wash over me.

Maybe he does care after all.

***

Okay, so maybe Harry and I don't exactly have the perfect friendship. Maybe we still have a few kinks to work out… like me being in love with him and him being a prat about it because he knows and I know and if we don't talk about it everything will go to hell… just off the top of my head.

Looking back now, I'm not quite sure exactly when my feelings toward Harry Potter had moved beyond the realm of purely friendly. I guess it just came upon me, upon us both, unexpectedly, with a quiet, ecstatic burst of energy. One day he had been all Harry, just my friend, the Chosen One crap nearly forgotten, mildly curious about my poor pathetic me and my dawning sexuality; and then like a poorly-executed fade in one of those cheap muggle straight-to-video movies, the little grinding gears of my own thought had melted and I was here, in a filthy London flat, playing myself into (or is it out of?) Harry Potter's little circle of intimates.

The larger part of me still says that Harry is becoming the Chosen One again, all work and no play, rising from the deeps of his would-be innocent personality like a slumbering sea creature on a mission solely to find the carefully mortared stone of my heart, covered with a lush and verdant abundance of unfamiliar feelings, every one of which pulsed "Potter" at my roots.

The funny thing is, it still does.

***

I yawn and frown into my coffee mug. Harry sits across from me, all beams and smiles, and he laughs again.

"What's so funny?" I say, already smiling myself.

"Nothing," he replies, still giggling.

"No," I say. "You can't just spontaneously start laughing without telling me what you're laughing about."

He sighs and shakes his head, that stupid smile still plastered on his face. "Susan doesn't know I'm here."

"Susan?" I ask stupidly, and then it comes back to me. "Oh, right. Sorry."

"'Sokay."

"She doesn't know you're here?" At the shake of his head, I frown again. "Why didn't you tell her?"

He looks away and scrubs a hand through his hair tiredly. "I dunno," he sighs. "I didn't want her getting upset."

"Why would she get upset about seeing an old friend?" I ask. He just shakes his head again.

"I dunno." He strokes the handle to his own mug with his thumb, obviously frustrated. "I should really go soon."

I look down into the black pool of coffee at the bottom of my mug. I don't want him to leave me again, but I just keep looking down in an attempt at keeping the disappointment in my eyes hidden from him.

"Oh," I say instead.

What did I expect from him, exactly? A pat on the back? A hug?

Did I expect him to have some kind of torch for me?

Why did he come here after all these years? Just to scream me down?

"Why did you marry her?" This thought just spills from my lips before I know that it's coming.

He blinks and shrugs a shoulder. "I dunno," he says for a third time. "I guess we were just young and stupid… she wanted a name, and I needed a warm body to wake up to in the mornings. It was a cheap deal, I s'pose."

He looks up at me and smiles brokenly, and I feel the sadness pull at my heart.

"A warm body to wake up to?" I choke out, still concealing my tears.

"Yeah," he says with another pathetic shrug. "I just needed someone to be there for me at the time, to assure me that everything was going to be okay. I guess I still do."

I blink back the flow of hot salted tears, and they sting the back of my eyes. "I could do that for you."

I mentally slap myself. It had come without thought, and I feel the blush creeping up my neck and burning my cheeks. There's no way to justify it, and I find myself trapped beneath his confused stare.

"Well… I just mean…" I stammer, struggling to find words that don't exist.

"Ron?" he whispers, and God, I love the sound of my name on his lips.

"W—what?"

I prepare myself for the horrible curses he's going to throw at me.

"I'd…" He pauses a moment, just a moment, and sighs. "I'd really like that."

It takes me a moment to piece together exactly what it is that he's said. When it finally clicks, I feel all the blood in my body rapidly rushing south.

"Really?"

"Yeah," he whispers, leaning across my very small coffee table. "Really."

I lean forward, too, and the coffee table creaks in protest. He smiles, eyes sparkling with an emotion I can't pinpoint. I can only slowly inch closer to him, to his warmth and kindness, and my heart is ready to burst with anticipation.

He makes a whimpering noise, which only makes me harder. My heart slams against my ribcage as I reach down and gently touch my clothed erection, straining against my denims. I inhale suddenly, and he just moves closer to me… I shudder at what's to come as our lips brush together so innocently…

And then the mood is completely ruined by a loud banging on my front door.

Harry jumps up, tripping backward on his own feet and banging his head against the wall.

"Shit!" he shouts and I jump, too, scrambling for the door while simultaneously smoothing down my hair.

And I fling open the door.

A woman stands on my porch, her copper-colored hair falling in front of her dark brown eyes. She crosses her arms over her chest and taps her foot against the concrete, glaring past me directly at Harry.

Harry's mouth falls open and he seems to struggle finding an excuse for being here. His wife keeps glaring.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

I stand there stupidly with my mouth open, looking from one to the other nervously.

Please don't drag me into this. Please don't drag me into this. Please don't drag me into—

"And you," she says, pointing at me.

Oh, shit.

"What are you doing with my husband? How long has he been here?" She pauses, examining me from head-to-toe. And I can almost hear something click into place as she recognizes me.

"Wait a minute," she says slowly. "You're that friend from school, aren't you? I remember you! Why are you kidnapping him? If you hurt him, I swear to God—"

I keep quiet, my heart hammering. I feel my stomach drop unexpectedly, and I stop to wonder if her words are actually affecting me.

Harry just looks at me nervously, sadly, and I now know that he doesn't really love her.

In one quick motion, she grabs his arm and tugs him out my front door. He looks at me pitifully before she slams the door shut on me.

And I'm left in silence again.

***

His hands are so warm on me. I can feel them move over my bare skin so smoothly, wanting to touch me everywhere they can. One of them is down below now, beneath the blankets, helping me to get off, and I close my eyes because I'm oh-right-there-so-very-close…

And then there's a noise, loud and shrill in my ear that makes me surface from my fantasy. I come in my pants from the memory of it and how very real it felt to me before rolling toward the telephone.

It rings again into the chilled air of my empty bedroom and I take a quick glance at the digital clock to check the time. Who'd want to call at three in the morning?

I pick it up to interrupt its third cry and hold it up to my ear. "City morgue. You stab 'em, we slab 'em."

It's hard to even be funny when you're tired.

"Ron?" I recognize the voice immediately and it makes the hair on my neck stand up.

"Harry," I reply sleepily. "What's up?"

Harry sounds relieved and yet nervous over the phone. "Ron, listen, I don't have much time. I'm on a payphone, and I only have a minute… I wanted to apologize."

I yawn and scratch my knee. "Apologize?"

"For yesterday."

My heart sinks in my chest. He's apologizing for flirting with me.

As if he needs to apologize for that! The only one who needs to apologize is What's-Her-Face, the bird that Harry decided to wed and allow her to interrupt the moment when all my late-night fantasies were about to come true.

Susan.

"Ron? You still there?"

I blink, yanked out of my thoughts once more. "Yeah," I say. "I'm here."

There's a pause then, no longer than a moment, and then he says, "Ron, I need to go."

I nod slowly and then remember that he can't see me. "All right then."

"Good night," he tells me. "Sleep well."

As if he gives a fuck how well I sleep.

And then I hang up on him, roll into my pillows, and silently cry my eyes out.

***

Morning comes all too soon for me as I'm blinded by a full blast of sunlight. I press my palms over my eyes to escape it and eventually end up getting out of bed and wandering into the kitchen.

I miss the smell of breakfast. My stomach rumbles at the memory of Harry's cooking.

Pathetic, that's what it is. Downright pathetic. What am I, a fourteen-year-old girl?

Yes, I decide as I imagine the look he'd have in those bright green eyes as his mouth closes around my erection…

And then I come in my pants again. Bloody fantastic.

***

The smell of alcohol sets me alight with temptation. Hermione used to tell me not to drink, would nag me about my responsibilities as a prefect and how all I'm doing is killing brain cells that could be put to use doing something worthwhile.

I'm not a fucking prefect anymore, though, am I?

The lights are dimmed low so that many would have to squint to see through the cigarette smoke curling around the room. I'm used to it though; I tend to come here a lot to drink away that bitter taste of being alone. There's a dart board up on the wall by the pool table, but I pass it over to make my way toward the bar.

The bartender's name is Tom, which makes me smile shamelessly. Nobody has any idea of the life I used to live, full of danger and Invisibility and sneaking off to places with my best mate that we weren't supposed to be.

Tom is a handsome enough man, married to a large woman with curly dark hair and even darker eyes. He looks up from the bar at me with pretty, feminine blue eyes and smiles.

"Hey, Ron," he says. "the usual?"

"Please," I reply as I take my usual seat two chairs away from the telly. He sets in front of me a bottle of beer not minutes later, and I admire for a moment how pretty the water droplets look as they cling to the glass.

I reach into my jacket pocket and take out a pack of Marlboro. Nobody else knows that I do this, that I inhale the nicotine so deeply that I forget who I am for a second.

And the smoke curls around my head in puffs of gray until my hands are shaking from the pleasure.

And I am lost in oblivion.

***

It's late. I know that much, because the streetlamp's orange glow is the only thing giving me any light.

My head pounds from the hangover I know I deserve. The bed I lay on smells of cheap cologne, and I wonder for a moment when I bought it and why the hell I put it on last night. I try to roll over in the musk, but something stops me.

Something solid, something warm that I've been wanting next to me for a long time.

I open my eyes and stare at the dark-haired man next to me.

It all comes back to me as I lay in the dark with a complete stranger. The smell of cigarette smoke, the smothering scent of the cologne, and those dark blue eyes flicking at me from over by the pool table. How could I resist such a warm body, such a kind face?

I had wanted Harry. I still do, and I close my eyes and try to picture my best friend laying next to me instead of what's-his-name, dark hair falling over bright green eyes and a perfect mouth whispering "I love you, Ron" into my ear.

I don't know this man and I never will know him. I just know the desperate fumble he gave me, the hard and needy fucking I received from him against the wall. We had missed the bed entirely and had ended up with me bent over for him with my hands flat on the wall and his fingers searched me, entered me, groped me…

It had felt so empty, so meaningless. I just needed something physical last night, someone to see when I woke up.

And I'm not liking who I see.

It takes me a while to find my pants in the dark and I try not to wake the man I used. When I find my clothes and my dirty, sweat-stained sweater, I leave his apartment silently.

What the hell have I done?

***

The streets are dirty and I wander aimlessly for a bit before remembering where my apartment is exactly. At least I'm closer than I thought.

I turn a corner, nearly stepping on a cat in the process, which hisses at me and darts under a nearby truck. I keep walking as silent as I can, watching the houses around me nervously as if waiting for something to happen.

You never know…

I can feel the familiarity as I near my home. It's a rush that swoops over me, and the tension in my shoulders relaxes.

It's not even really home. It's just the place where I sleep, the place that provides me a roof and a bed. I don't know what home really is… home is the place that I love, the place where if I have to go there, they have to take me in.

The Burrow doesn't do that for me anymore. I haven't seen my mother in years, and I'm not sure she'd recognize me if I just showed up looking for a place to stay.

I start to climb the stairs to my apartment, that little hole of a place that makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry because that's all that I can afford to do anymore, and I open the door.

When I get inside, I collapse into my sofa, too hot to go to sleep.

I just want to go home.

***

I wake up to my empty house alone, cold, and lonely. There's nobody here but me, and that fact repeats itself in my head over and over again until I want to throw up. Until I have it memorized. I am alone.

I will always be alone.

The worst part isn't even that Harry left me again. The worst part is that he was here, here to tempt me, to lure me in with that sweet laugh and pretty green eyes, here only long enough for me to want and then he leaves me.

But who really did the leaving, I wonder?

Who broke whose heart?

A crushing feeling of guilt flows over me and tears prick the back of my eyes threateningly. I swallow, running my thoughts over in my head. Harry had been so warm those few days in bed, so warm and inviting and smelling like comfort. I find myself more than missing it now, the company, the smell, the feeling of having him by my side again.

I force myself out of bed, where the sheets lay cold and crisp against my skin. When Harry was here they were soft and warm, but now they were hardened by loneliness. The whole apartment reeks of it, of loneliness and beer, and I hate it. The floor is cold, too, almost painfully so as it touches my bare feet, and I think about how I let it happen again. I had once promised myself never to sleep around again, but I suppose now that I'd spoken too soon.

If only it had been Harry in my arms then, Harry's hair in my face, Harry's smell making my heart swell with desire. But it had been a stranger, just a dark-haired stranger that I met in a bar. It sickens me that I do that, but a part of me thrives on it like it thrives on oxygen. A part of me – well over half—lives on sex and alcohol and cigarettes, anything forbidden, anything familiar that will take my mind someplace that doesn't remind me of my former best friend.

I didn't want to lose him when I left. That's not the reason I decided to leave the wizard world behind. I loved Harry as I do now, but the pressure of isolation suffocated me. Hermione leaving me, Harry running off with some bird he'd hardly known, it was all too much for me to handle at the time.

So I did the thing I'm obviously best at:

I left.

I pad across my bedroom and out into the living room, where I can still see the indentations in the sofa where Harry was sitting, before. I ponder eating for a moment, my stomach rumbling in demand of food, but I decide against it. There's no point in eating now, not when I'll just be hungry later.

I hardly even think about it when it happens. I go over to the telephone, which hangs on the wall, and I dial in Hermione's number.

It rings, and my heart flutters madly in my chest with anxiety, and it rings a second time, and I hope for a moment that maybe she's not home, that maybe she had to go out…

"Hello?"

I swallow, and tremble, and her voice is so familiar even over the phone. I've missed her so much, and I can almost remember those long hours spent together at school in the library, copying down the answers to Charms homework…

"Hello?" she asks again, her voice a little deeper than I'm used to, but then again, we're not teenagers anymore. "Is anyone there?"

"Hey, Hermione," I reply finally, gathering up that Gryffindor courage.

There's a long pause. "Ron?"

I close my eyes, trying to imagine her expression, brown eyes full of shock and confusion. "Yeah, it's me."

"Oh my God," she says, her voice a little strangled now, as if with tears. "How've… how've you been?"

I can feel the tears again, but I keep them at bay. "Hermione, I did a bad thing."

And I explain, I explain all of it, spilling my heart out over a long-distance phone conversation: how I feel about Harry, how close we were to kissing, how much older he looks when he smiles, the way I woke up in the bed of a man I didn't know. She hardly has time to make any comments as I pour out confession after confession, and when I finish, I'm left panting and clutching at the arm of the couch for support.

"I'm just so tired, Hermione," I tell her, my voice hoarse now.

She pauses again, and my head hurts. "You should tell him how you feel."

The thought of it makes my throat tighten with sudden queasiness. Telling Hermione is difficult enough; to tell Harry would be like trying to commit suicide.

"No," I say simply.

And, being Hermione, she argues her point.

"Well, if you don't tell him, you'll just be welling it up inside, and that's really unhealthy. You should just let it out. You'll feel so much better if you tell him."

I sigh. "But he'll hate me."

"This is Harry we're talking about," Hermione says to me. "He's your best friend. If you can't tell him you love him, then what good is he?"

I consider this for a moment. "I don't know…"

"He loves you," she continues. "You're his world. Trust me."

I hang up the phone even though I know she isn't done. I close my eyes again and I imagine Harry's mouth on my own, on my neck, tasting my skin and pressing me down on the floor, taking me…

God, I want him. So badly.

But do I want him enough to take him?

***

It's not long after that awkward conversation on the telephone with Hermione that Harry returns to my doorstep, not looking nearly as angry as the last time I saw him there. It still surprises me that he looks so different than the Harry Potter I used to know, the one who would stay up late with me at the Burrow and have conversations about nothing, the one who kissed my little sister so many years ago, the one I fell in love with.

He's gone now, disappeared beneath this new Harry, a foreign Harry that I've never known in the past. This one is calm, cool, collected, a flurry of emotion hidden behind an expression of stone.

His mouth starts moving, lips forming words, and God help me but I don't know what the hell he's talking about. I stare at him, at the way his shoulders are shrugging nonchalantly as he speaks in carefully chosen tones (knowing Harry, probably rehearsed in front of a bathroom mirror). When he breaks for air, he looks down at his perfect shoes, and then back up to look me in the eye.

"What I mean is, Ron…" He takes a deep breath, looking awkwardly from my eyes to my mouth. "I thought it would be better to apologize in person rather than over the phone in the middle of the night."

I blink, my eyes aching with the need to look anywhere but at my former best friend but I force my gaze to remain unwavered.

"Harry… you don't need to—"

"No," Harry interrupts me. "I really do. It was uncalled for, and… and…" His hands gesticulate restlessly for a moment, and finally he merely sighs. "And I'm sorry."

I can't help but allow my hands to clench into frustrated fists, even when I still feel like a marionette with some of its strings cut. "You really don't have to apologize for anything," I manage to choke out.

"Yes I—"

"No!" I shout, and he jumps at my outburst. I almost regret it, but then again, he needs to understand. He never did take the time to get to know me, not really, all those years at Hogwarts. He was oblivious to the way I felt about his little fling with my sister, blind to the fact that I was living in his shadow. I had believed that I was unwanted, and right now, Harry is only proving me right.

"I'm not going to let you apologize for almost allowing me to spill my heart and soul!" I continued, tears hot in my eyes. "I'm not going to let you regret almost kissing me, not going to stand by and let you do this to me any longer. I love you, don't you understand that?! I love you and I always have and I always will, and the only thing I'm going to let you apologize for is letting it end!"

He blinks, looking shocked and confused, and a blush starts to creep into his pale cheeks.

I go on, "I slept with a man the other night solely because he looked like you! I need you, Harry, but you're blind even with your glasses."

A long, echoing pause. The only thing that moves is the dust in the air between us, him still standing outside in the drizzle of rain and me barefooted on my carpet, flushed with the relief of tension.

And then he does something that I never believed would ever happen.

He takes a small step forward, puts his hands on my shoulders, pulls me toward him, and kisses me.

At first, it's just a hard press of lips, a fairly sorry excuse for a kiss. But then he hears me moan – softly, quietly – and his opens up to me, his tongue soft and wet against my bottom lip. My heart's in my throat now, I can feel it, a dull pulsing sensation spreading from there to my chest and then farther still…

"I didn't think… you felt the same," Harry pants out between kisses, like I've never seen him before. This is a part of Harry that I've never seen before, quivering, mouth so very wet against my own. "I… I need you, Ron, I need you like I need air…"

"But… your wife—" I begin, and he pushes the kiss deeper, making me hard and squirming.

He leads me back into the house and then against the wall, which is hard and cold against my clothed back. He whimpers, teeth clipping my own, and his hands dive up beneath my dirty shirt.

"Nng…" I mumble against his mouth. His fingers touch my skin and he's so cold, so cold and yet so hot, and I moan, a vibration against our mouths. I never thought I would end up here, against a wall with Harry's hands in my shirt, snogging my best friend.

Harry's mouth moves smoothly against mine and one of his hands is on my stomach now, pressing just enough to make me gasp against his lips. I try to wriggle away from him, to talk some sense into him for just a minute, but then my heart tries to beat its way through my chest and I decide that now would not be the best time to interfere. After all, this is what I've always wanted, this is the night when my dreams will finally come true.

"Harry," I whisper when he pulls his mouth away to latch onto my neck. "Harry, please…"

He knows me far too well, I realize, as the hand that was on my stomach dips beneath the waistband of my denims, and the even under my boxers to touch the erection that strains against the soft material of my clothes.

"Oh!" I wiggle delightedly, pushing upward slightly into his hand.

"Ron," he mumbles against my shoulder. "Ron, I want you… let me take you, please…"

I'm breathing shallowly through my mouth, making it prickle with dryness. "Oh, God, Harry… just…" He doesn't understand, this is so wrong, so very very wrong of us to do. He's married, but I'm just so lonely and have been for far too long.

Harry runs his fingers up my cock smoothly, cold from the rain but rapidly heating against my body. "You're so easy," he jokes, and I feel for a moment as if we're sixteen again, in the corridor just outside of a class we're late for, him teasing me about Lavender. But we're not sixteen anymore; we're older now, old enough to know better, ruining a friendship that has survived twenty-two years if you don't count my time away.

"E-easy?" I stammer, too caught up in the completely physical sensation of the—the thing he's doing with his hand, with the stroking and the twisting and my God, where the hell did he learn to do this?

His mouth moves from my shoulder to my lips and then to my ear, pressing in a firm kiss before whispering, "Let me take you to bed."

I close my eyes and a shiver runs up my spine. "W-wha…?"

Before I realize exactly what's going on, he's pushing me backwards through the hallway to that tiny, dirty bedroom with the bed we'd slept in before… before…

"God, I… I… oh!" I moan as he shoves me to the bed in a graceless move which send pain to my neck and kisses me again. I could get used to this, the kissing thing, his mouth so smooth and pressing bruising kisses onto my chapped lips.

His hands are at my zipper, and my denims are at my knees before I know it. "God, Ron… wait…"

I would wait for him for eternity if he wanted me to.

He pushes down his own pants, kicking them aside to land in a messy pile on the floor. His own erection is hard and hot against mine and he rocks back and forth shakily, his eyes closing to the rhythm. "Ron, God, please…"

I unbutton his shirt with clumsy fingers and it hangs open to reveal his chest. Still a little too thin in despite of the food shoveled down his throat from my mother. I run my hands along it, fingers pausing to rub his pink nipples.

Sure enough, he arches slightly, whimpering. "Pants. Off. Now."

Startled by the commanding tone, I remove my jeans. He looks down at me with hungry green eyes, his glasses sliding down his nose from the sweat. He leans down and kisses me, peeling my shirt over my head.

"Need you naked," he explains, rubbing his cock along mine some more. He licks at my Adam's apple and then the hollow of my throat, making me whine with pleasure. "I love those little noises."

I blush. "Harry… shit…"

Harry smiles and he nibbles a little. "I want to fuck you."

Blunt.

"Yes," I moan, and he pushes his fingers into my mouth. Saltysweet, I note, lapping at them.

"Ron." He says my name softy, fingers coming out of my mouth with a wet plop. He works one of them into me, pressure burning as the finger wriggles. I hiss at the pain, eyes closed, but then pleasure…

"Ah, fuck!" I whimper, arching up.

He smiles again. "There? You like it there?" he asks me, and adds another finger, rubbing the spot again.

"Harry… Harry…" I moan out, and it send a sweet pleasure through me to say his name. Harry. The one person I could trust more than anybody else in the world, over Hermione, over my mother.

It feels wrong, somehow, when he pushes himself into me. I press myself against the headboard, rocking with him in a kind of hypnotizing rhythm, trying to concentrate on the feeling of being fucked, on the very green of his eyes watching me. He lets out a soft moan and comes, and I shortly follow, spilling out my heart onto dirty sheets.

It smells just a little bit too much like semen, but he kisses me softly and we drift into sleep.

And I contemplate the meaning of desire.

***

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. It's difficult to make out his apology over the steady beating of the rain on the ground outside my apartment door. His hair is smoothed down by the rain, thin frame clad in clothes borrowed from me that look just slightly too big on him.

"Harry… please…" I whimper, noticing for the first time just how pitiful I am, how pathetic, like this had never happened to me before.

He shakes his head, water dripping from the strands of black hair that hangs in front of his sad green eyes. "This isn't a fairy tale, Ron. What did you think would happen? That I would leave Susan and run away with you into the sunset?"

"I—" I cough, and even that much hurts my lungs as I stare at him vacantly, sadly, grateful for the rain that disguises my tears. "I thought that we had something… I thought that…"

"That what?" Harry asks me, his tone harsh despite the sad expression. "That I loved you?"

My face falls, my heart seeming to beat ever so slowly now that it had been said. It was all a lie, it was all just a fantasy of mine that had me believing for those few blissful moments that life wasn't just bars and cigarettes and one-night stands.

"Don't do this to me," I plead, my voice nearly lost in the pattering of the rain.

He frowns, his eyes shining even in the horrible weather. Rain; a perfect setting for this horrid ending. I can almost hear the sound of it ending, twenty-two long and wonderful years of the most perfect friendship I've ever experienced. He was my first friend and my best friend, his eyes so friendly and inviting in that cramped train compartment…

But it was all a lie.

"Ron," he says. Even my name on his lips sounds false now. "I can't stay with you. I have a wife now, and—"

"I can't stay here alone."

Harry's brow furrows a bit before he turns to go. "Take care, Ron. I'll see you around."

I cling to my doorframe, rainwater dripping into my shoes, and I watch him go.

***

My entire life, I realize, I had been waiting. Waiting for that one epiphany when my life would suddenly turn around for the better, when I would be truly happy with myself and what I do.

I had thought, before, that leaving the Wizard World behind was my epiphany, my turning point. I thought I was honestly happier away from all the people I had grown up with, miles from the place I had once called my home. But I was miserable, of course; my dirty London flat had nothing on the tall gleaming buildings of Diagon Alley.

So it is that, a few months after Harry Potter had retreated from my doorstep, I walk with a bounce in my step into the Ministry of Magic.

"Morning, Ron," Hermione calls to me, her frazzled brown hair tied in a messy ponytail at the back of her head. She's positively beaming, as always, her brown eyes so pretty in the bright light. No stress, no worries, no darkness there to leave me hanging.

"Morning," I call back with a quick wave, and I fall into step beside her quick pace. "What's the rub?"

"That energy source in Slade?" She waves papers at me. "It was a hydra. I tried to tell them that a wizard couldn't possibly produce so much power, but everyone's still so paranoid about those Death Eaters…"

"What are your theories?"

"I'm thinking a quick sweep of the village for wounded and then we can send in the Aurors for the actual mess of it. Not that I think the Aurors deserve it, it's just that they've been quite bored the past few weeks…"

I smile for the first time in ages, my step even lighter than air. "Sounds like a plan."

And I realize that my epiphany wasn't to leave; it wasn't that I needed Harry to live my life for me in the dark of the apartment. It was returning home that gave me my ah-ha moment in all the darkness.

I just needed a little bit of light.


End file.
